Overview
Back in the days before the Su'ndi people discovered civilisation they worshipped a number of spirits and primal forces instead of the celestials.
The most powerful of these so called old gods ruled the oasises and there were many rituals meant to keep them placated. Some of these rituals involved such barbaric acts as human sacrifice and blood magic.
The most important of these Gods was a force known as "The Mother". The Mother was considered to be the source of life itself. The elemental that generated the spark of life that gave man his life and soul.
The Su'ndi have grown beyond these petty gods and no longer recognise them as being divine.
The Old Religion
The old religion says that life was created by a type of elemental attracted to the energy of the world dragons and that they formed living beings in the same way that the water elementals created the oceans. The old religions believed that all beings are formed around one of these elementals with humans having the greatest elemental of the type available to themselves. As a result these “elemental-sparks” provide that mystical source of magic that makes man more than a chunk of rock but that the elementals themselves are no more conscious than those that create water or air.
Most people followed a middle ground approach where the Life Spark(s) are concerned. They believed that the elementals that create the spark of life have an influence upon them in a similar way to how the celestials influence life. The life sparks were believed to be capable of inflicting insanity when ill treated and to have been capable of influencing the actions of those around them by manipulating a persons passions. This was known as the elemental influence and was commonly attributed to emotions that are so powerful that they strip away reason. Something we now understand to be down to Yatantan's influence rather than that of the old gods. They offered homage to these elementals, hoping to placate them or reduce their power, by following the traditions of the land: traditions known to be passed down from their ancestors.
Some maintained an old tradition that favored "the Mother". There are a few variations in this belief. People who believed in the mother believed that rather than life being created by a multitude of elementals it is an elemental form called the mother that creates life – some believe that the mother is directly responsible for all life but most believe that one mother or life-spark is responsible for each individual animal, bird, man, insect and fish. In both cases the mother or life-spark is a godly being that influences the lives of those she created. Some believe that the influence is blind, as the elemental-spark is no more alert or alive than any other elemental, and some believe that the life-spark does so with a purpose, holding intellect and life itself.
When the life-spark was considered to be a goddess in her own right the worshippers also believed that the Elemental-Spark can influence the other elementals. Thus a famine caused by a hot wind can either be the act of a bunch of bored flame elementals or because the Elemental-Spark wishes to display displeasure.
Death was believed to happen when the elemental spark becomes so faint that it stops spreading life about itself. The reason for this is open to much debate. Some believe it was because the Elemental-Spark willed that life ends at this point, some believed it was because a spark can only live so long once it has been given by the Source-Spark and some believed it was due to the elemental spark itself waning in strength. This waning was generally believed to be due to the cocoon of life formed about the life-spark being corrupted by some other elemental influence, for example an excess of fire, thus weakening the life-spark and making the life it generates more fragile.
The Spirit-Mother was the priestess of the old traditions. This secretive body of women could only be entered through the adoption or birth of a girl child into the order and Spirit-Mothers never married. Originally this order acted as priestesses for the population but as the Celestial movement became favoured they have retreated back into the traditional roles of medicine woman and midwife and whilst doctors and healers do not need to be spirit-mothers midwives always were. The Spirit-Mothers maintained their ancestral place in society for many generations following the change to the current enlightened religion but are practically unknown in the modern era.
This link life-spark needs reviewing and either moving here or deleting.
